Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

“The love that moves the sun and other stars,” The Culture Project on Facebook

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“‘The love that moves the sun and the other stars’ has called you into being. This love has willed that you exist. You and I are priceless. You and I are precious. You and I are irreplaceable. If are looking for affirmation, look no further. If you are looking for acceptance, look no further. If you are looking for purpose, look no further. It may seem like in the grand scheme of things you’re insignificant, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“When you love someone, it’s as if they’re the only one you see. You just can’t get your mind off them. In an even deeper way, God the Father loves you without exception, and without condition. How beautiful it is to be loved by love! How beautiful it is to share this love. Let’s change the world!”    –Dominic, “The Culture Project,” Facebook, October 27, 2018

“Radiating The Love That Moves The Sun And Stars” (2021 Blogpost)

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“Arguably the most important official document to proceed from the Second Vatican Council was the ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,’ written ‘to unfold more fully’ the ‘inner nature and universal mission’ of the Church. (LG 1.) The document is better known by its Latin title, ‘Lumen Gentium,’ taken from its first sentence: ‘Christ is the light of nations.’ By proclaiming the Gospel, explains Lumen Gentium, the Church ‘brings the light of Christ to all people.’ It is fitting, therefore, that the theme of the bicentennial year of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is ‘Radiate Christ.’

[. . .]

“And the light of Christ, a light greater than any other, is love. Indeed, in the final words of Dante’s Paradiso, it is the radiating ‘love that moves the sun and other stars.'”    –Dr. Kenneth Craycraft, “Radiating The Love That Moves The Sun and Stars,” The Catholic Telegraph, September 2, 2021

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love (2006)

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eat-pray-love“The Italian we speak today, therefore, is not Roman or Venetian (though these were the powerful military and merchant cities) nor even really entirely Florentine. Essentially, it is Dantean. No other European language has such an artistic pedigree. And perhaps no language was ever more perfectly ordained to express human emotions than this fourteenth-century Florentine Italian, as embellished by one of Western civilization’s greatest poets. Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in terza rima, triple rhyme, a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating three times every five lines, giving his pretty Florentine vernacular what scholars call a ‘cascading rhythm’ –a rhythm which still lives in the tumbling, poetic cadences spoken by Italian cabdrivers and butchers and government administrators even today. The last line of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante is faced with the vision of God Himself, is a sentiment that is still easily understandable by anyone familiar with so-called modern Italian. Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, l’amor che move sole e l’altre stelle. . .

“‘The love that moves the sun and the other stars.’

“So it’s really no wonder that I want so desperately to learn this language.”

– Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love (2006)

“Beauty awakens the soul to act,” a letter to an editor (Chico, CA)

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“I love this Dante Alighieri quote: ‘Beauty awakens the soul to act.’

“A few months ago, a friend of the Jesus Center offered a gift of a person, Shannon McConney to use her creative gifts to complete the beauty part of the Jesus Center space. I realized quickly that Shannon was not merely a decorator, but an artist so I introduced her to my good friend, Jess Mercer (known for her work in therapeutic arts and installations up on the Ridge). Well, magic quickly followed.

“Together they have designed, created, crafted, and installed an interactive art piece in our women’s multipurpose room where we hold most of our classes for the entire shelter population. When someone comes into our space, we want them to experience something other than rules, walls, doors, windows, and a safe place to store their things.

“Those are all great, but what is emerging here on Fair Street is art, words, color, texture, interactive elements that will awaken together with the handmade quilts, warm welcome, beautiful meals a human to act on their own behalf to find a pathway to their best life. This wall of 400 tiny houses will serve to awaken the imagination of those who may still be stuck in the darkness that comes when all hope is lost. As they choose to write their name and put it on one of the little houses, they are allowing themselves to dream of a life blessed by God and full of goodness and beauty.”   –Laura Cootsona, Letter to the Editor, Chico Enterprise-Record, December 11, 2021

“The Love That Moves The Sun and Other Stars” (2015)

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blue-circular-stained-glass-window“Today I invite you to reflect on these final lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I would recommend reading them many times, contemplating what it must be like to experience the presence of God through the heavenly beatific vision.

“According to Boethius, love works like physics. It’s an elemental force. In fact, desire (eros) is an animating impulse that governs the entire universe, moving the sun and all the stars.

[. . .]

“God’s love is true love precisely because God knows we have the ability to spurn that love. Otherwise, grace changes from gift to entitlement. Love isn’t love until you give it away! This sort of love, in the final analysis, is the reason why a totally sufficient and perfect God would create something else and allow it to participate in him. If you find yourself suffering today – from end-of-semester stress, work problems, or anything else – try to remember that the source and summation of your created existence is to love. This love is necessarily a movement outside of self, a movement that ultimately affirms your identity in a new and revelatory reality. In this reality, ‘our image fuses/Into the circle and finds its place in it.'”   –Benjamin Winter, “The Love that Moves the Sun and the Other Stars,” Conciliar Post, April 17, 2015

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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